Author's Note: Well, fuck. I have a ton of ideas if I could ever just find the motivation to make myself sit down and write. I'm gonna stop making promises that I'll update soon because I can't guarantee that, but I am about halfway done with another soulmate-identifying marks au fic, so maybe. Anyway, here you go, a Starbucks/Barnes and Noble/Stucky fanfic which is mostly canon-compliant. This takes place post-Winter Soldier and pre-Age of Ultron. Warning for time-period typical homophobia.

"I had 'em on the ropes" has always been written on James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes' skin. Always. Well, maybe not always, because Steve was younger than Bucky was, but at least as long as he could remember.

When he'd met Steve he'd known he would do anything for the skinny, asthmatic, blond kid that couldn't keep himself out of trouble. On top of that, he was sickly, and Bucky worried every time a new sickness same that it would be the one that took his soulmate away from him.

Sure, society had never accepted it, so both Steve and Bucky pretended they were still looking for their soulmates. They kept up with everyone else their age, even going on dates - or at least Bucky did; Steve wasn't so popular with the ladies. It enraged him - how dare they not realize what a treasure he was?! He was kind and pure of heart in a way Bucky doubted was even possible for anyone other than Steve. He was kind of glad, though, too, because it meant Steve was his. No one else was gonna touch his soulmate, no, he was all Bucky's.

And then the war came. Bucky didn't want to go, didn't want to leave Steve alone, and he waited until Steve all but shoved him out the door, telling him to go serve their country. But he'd still seen the papers Steve had shoved under a small stack of his drawings. Steve was denied on account of his having had just about every illness known to man. Bucky's heart broke for him, and in the end he went because Steve couldn't, but so desperately wanted to. He worried the whole time he was fighting, though. They wouldn't bother to tell him if Steve had caught some awful illness even worse than every other one he'd had, if he died from it. After all, they were nothing to each other because soulmate pairs had to consist of a man and a woman.

When Bucky and his fellow soldiers were captured, he prayed for Steve's forgiveness, for leaving him alone. And when what Zola did to him became too painful, he blocked it all out and focussed on his soulmate, on Steve, Steve, Steve, everything he could remember about Steve. He was remembering Steve drawing him, the light, rapid, flowing movements his hand made back and forth, the way he bit his lip in concentration, the rapid, intense flickering of his eyes from the page to Bucky's form and back again, looking but not really seeing, not comprehending, freeing Bucky to stare at him in wonder at the gift Steve was without the other questioning it and blushing.

Then his shoulder was gently touched - gently? no, a dream - and Bucky heard Steve's voice. It sounded like perfection, like home, like happiness. His eyes opened as the touch to his shoulder was repeated and he looked up at Steve's handsome face, somehow more...grown than it had been before. Bucky's eyes trailed down to find broad shoulders and pure muscle where before there had always been skinny Steve Rogers, made of purely skin and bone.

"Steve?" he asked.

Steve helped him to his feet in a blur and Bucky realized Steve was now a few inches taller than him. He ignored it momentarily and clung thankfully to his Stevie, his soulmate, before recalling his place behind enemy lines in the middle of a war zone. Panic seized his body. Steve could've got hurt, Steve could still get hurt! He allowed Steve to help him from the room, but he didn't relax until they were back at their camp and Steve was, for the moment at least, out of danger.

Later, Steve told him about the whole process. All Bucky could focus on is What if they had failed, what if Steve had died? and Thank god he didn't.

Life was good, for awhile. Stevie still persisted in doing ridiculous things like charging headfirst into danger, but now Bucky could follow his progress through the crosshairs of his scope and kill anyone that had the audacity to think about hurting his soulmate.

And then Bucky fell. He saw the anguish in Steve's eyes as the distance between them widened and he cried for the first time in a long, long time when he realized he was leaving Steve alone in the world.

Worse, perhaps, was that the fall didn't even kill him. Zola had him again and now there was no end to the pain. Physical, first, as they tried torture to get him to spill secrets, but then the worst mental pain he'd ever felt and everything went black.

The doctors were shocked, in a way, that new words appeared. More than one soulmark? It was unheard of. And yet, the marks being there in the first place was because you were meant to know your soulmate the first time you met them. So, of course, now that Bucky couldn't remember Steve, he'd gotten new words, because he would meet him for the first time again.

It took him years, decades, before he remembered them. It was hard to retain information when his mind was being continually wiped clean, but eventually the emotional attachment he felt to the words grew enough that he was aware. "Bucky?" was stamped across his stomach.

It was even more decades before he finally met his soulmate again. That one word started unravelling the tattered, shredding pieces of his mind, bringing back snippets. It was his soulmate, after all. He remembered the man on the bridge, only much smaller. He remembered him...drawing? And sick.

"I knew him."

"Wipe him."

It went dark.

When Bucky awoke he felt an itching sensation across his left hipbone. He knew, somehow, that he shouldn't call attention to it, so he didn't. He waited until he was set off after his next target to check it.

"People are gonna die, Buck. I can't let that happen." A fragment of a thought that he wished he couldn't either, that this person was honorable, brave, determined.

He was on the helicarrier, the goal was not to allow the American man - his target - to do...whatever it was he was trying to do. He heard them. The new words. And memories started flooding back immediately, bits and pieces, but he kept fighting, kept to the mission.

"YOU. ARE. MY. MISSION!"

"Then finish it. 'Cause I'm with you...to the end of the line." And then the man - Steve - was falling. And the Winter Soldier? - Bucky? - Buck? - no, the Winter Soldier - dove after him, pulled him out, left him gasping for breath on the bank.

And the Winter Soldier went to the Smithsonian Museums, found out what he could about James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes. Who looked like him, kind of. Who had died a hero. Bucky - the Winter Soldier - He wasn't sure he wanted to ruin that. He'd run. He'd wait. He'd see if more memories came back. But he knew that, eventually, he would return to the American Man, Captain America, Steve Rogers, his soulmate. Eventually.